


The Light That Darkens In the East

by Fictionista654



Series: The Star That Rises In the West [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dark, F/F, F/M, Future Fic, M/M, Magic Revealed, Multi, uther pendragon continues to be the worst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:08:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28162950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fictionista654/pseuds/Fictionista654
Summary: 1500 years after Arthur Pendragon's rein, Uther Pendragon rises again.Not really a sequel, but since the tone is the same I think I'll still lump it into the same series.
Relationships: Gwen/Morgana (Merlin), Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: The Star That Rises In the West [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2063202
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaahhhh let's do this!! I originally wanted to rewrite the first one, but the idea for a sequel came to me, and you know how it is when the plot bunny strikes. You have to forge while the iron is hot. Sorry for all these metaphors, I don't know what's happening either. Let's go!

Genocide.

It’s not a nice word, is it? It curdles on the tongue. People generally like to cover up the word with nicer-sounding ones. Re-education. Removal. Cleanse. Again and again, the human race revolts against itself, pouring death into the festering wound of hatred. 

What is the body count? Is it possible to comprehend? 

A life is a candle, and not everyone is allowed to burn theirs to the wick. Who decides who lives and who dies? Who decides which lights should be extinguished? 

Why?

These questions have been asked again and again in the course of the lifetime of this mad, beautiful, terrible race. 

It simply isn’t fair.

Someone has to do something about it.

***

We meet Merlin on the street. He’s coming out of his apartment building, his head ducked against the rain. He carries a parcel under one arm and no umbrella. Rain sloshes in the gutters. 

It’s been nearly fifteen-hundred years since we saw him last, and he looks it. His back is stooped, his long white hair fraying. He has a tremor and a limp. 

He stops at the street corner and looks into the oncoming traffic. A car tire skids, causing a tidal wave of water that would soak Merlin through if he weren’t already soaked. His mouth forms a curse word not heard on this planet for a few thousand years. He no longer remembers the language, but he never forgets a curse.

“Excuse me, excuse me sir!” someone shouts. He turns around, taking in a woman in a white vest. She is holding a scanner in one hand. “Random check!” she tells him.

Merlin sighs and holds his hand out palm-up, letting her run the red light over his skin. The scanner beeps twice, and the woman smiles.

“Thank you, sir. Have a nice day.” She moves on, the scanner aloft. Merlin would feel bad for her, but he has no pity for people like her. He lost it long ago.

The light changes, and he crosses the street. 

Let’s follow him.

He never takes the bus anymore, not since they started scanning there, too. So he walks the entire way to his destination, all point-five miles. When he arrives, his knees are shaking. He raises the grill and lets himself into the bookstore with a key he draws from one coat pocket. He must rummage through scraps of candy wrappers and loose coins to reach it.

It is not much warmer inside the bookstore. It is a cramped place, with shelves squashed together, and little room to move behind the counter, but Merlin likes it. It’s his, at least.  
He’s late opening today, but he doesn’t really care. He stopped caring—well, you know the drill.

With a sigh, he flicks on the light and flips the sign to _open_. Tom’s Used Books is back in business. When people ask if he’s Tom, Merlin only smiles. He settles behind the register and sets his parcel down on the floor beside him. Let’s leave him for now, to his books and his quiet.

One last thing.

If you thought Merlin knows who he is, you are very much mistaken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this first chapter! Time for me to disappear back into finals week :(
> 
> Join me on [tumblr](https://fictionista654.tumblr.com/)!


	2. Morgana

Morgana has not left her penthouse apartment in one month, eleven days, and six hours. She watches the street through her drawing room window, her fingers anxiously bouncing on the sill. She is younger than when we saw her last, not much more than twenty. Her long black hair is pulled back in a bun. In this life, she has glasses, which she pushes up her nose with her index finger.

The Morgana we saw last was a sorceress at the hight of her powers. A weapon in the shape of a woman. Unafraid.

This Morgana has not yet learned to pack away her fear. She picks at a hangnail, her face pale. There’s a buzz, and she jumps before remembering that she ordered food. It’s not like the Magician Detainment Squad would buzz up. They wouldn’t even knock.

At the knock at her door, Morgana jumps again. She takes a deep breath and opens the door. The deliveryman gives her her food. She smiles and thanks him. She shuts the door.

Despite her best efforts to avoid the new MagiScans, she fears will be found out. She doesn’t quite know what happens to magicians when they go missing, but she knows it’s not good. And as Uther’s adopted daughter, she knows more than most.

It’s funny how destiny works like that. It reshapes itself time and again, playing the same plays on a different stage. Hopefully for Morgana, this time will be different.

She puts her food down on the dining room table and sits at the edge of a chair. She doesn’t remember why she ordered food at all. She isn’t hungry anymore.

Poor Morgana. She doesn’t want your pity, but perhaps she has it anyway. Every day she goes without leaving her apartment is another day stuck inside her own mind, forced to replay the same thoughts over and over again.

The food didn’t come with utensils, and Morgana goes into her kitchen. She forgets what she came here for and stands blankly on the white towel. Her heart is pounding. A panic attack is moments away. It feels like there’s a rubberband connecting her heart and her left arm, and the rubberband is pulling tighter and tighter…

Morgana clutches the counter as the room revolves around her. _I’m dying,_ she thinks. _I must be dying._ Even if she were right, she wouldn’t be able to call an ambulance. Paramedics now have their own shiny MagiScanners.

It’s horrible and it’s lonely and tears pour down Morgana’s cheeks as she white-knuckles the counter. 

We’ll let her be.

Let me show you something else. Not three mile away, a dark building with no windows looms behind a chain-link fence. Guards patrol the perimeter, automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. A small group of protesters are waving signs and chanting, but the guards ignore them. 

Inside the building, a woman lies on a hard cot. She stares up at the ceiling, a smile on her face. Her arms are crossed over her chest as if she’s holding something. 

She bides her time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Morgana's a quarantine mood :/


	3. An Unpleasable Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been thinking about it and I'm not sure why I decided to attach this to another fic instead of making it its own AU, but it just felt right to me. So definitely expect things from the first fic to make an appearance in this one. 
> 
> I'm sorry for continuing to torture these poor characters! Fluff just isn't in my nature...at least not until there's a lot of angst first.

Uther Pendragon is not happy.

Uther Pendragon is never happy.

At the moment, he is planning the death of five million people. You would think this might cheer him up, given his disposition, but he hasn’t had his coffee yet.

“If we opened up two more facilities,” says one of the men sitting at the long table, “we could cleanse ten-thousand per day.” 

A woman, the tip of her pen caught in her mouth, frowns. “Where do you propose we open these facilities? We barely had the space to open up the last two cam—facilities,” she says hastily. 

Uther rests his cheek in his hand and watches his counsel argue over the most efficient way to kill magicians, sorcerers, whatever you want to call them. The poisonous scum mucking up his country, putting ordinary men and women in danger. For a moment, his mind drifts away as he contemplates the series of events that have led him here.

“We know the MagiScans are ninety-five percent accurate,” a man with a mustache is saying when Uther tunes back in. “And we’re working on increasing their ability to pinpoint magic levels.” 

“Work faster,” Uther snaps. The man anxiously straightens the stack of papers before him.

“Yes, sir.” 

You’ve probably guessed what’s happening in this room. The fate of every magic user in the country rests on on this committee’s decisions. And right now, it isn’t looking so good.

“What about the containment sectors?” Uther says. “Give me an update.”

A woman with mousy brown hair clears her throat. “Right now we have four-hundred thousand magic users contained in the entire city, not counting the facilities.” 

Displeasure curls Uther’s lip. “Is that all?” he demands. “Where are all these monsters _hiding_?”

A few of the counsel-members exchange looks.

“Magicians are slippery,” the woman says. 

Uther shudders. 

Maybe now is a good time to take a step back and look at the former king of Camelot. We haven’t examined him yet. Last time, he was dead. Perhaps it would be a good thing if he were dead now, but his heart keeps beating, and his lungs keep breathing. 

He doesn’t remember who he is, though sometimes he dreams that he’s riding on a horse, a lance held out before him. When his wife died in childbirth, he’d suspected it was coming. Sometimes it feels like his life has happened before. 

The counsel meeting adjourns, and Uther rises from his seat. He is wearing a charcoal-gray suit and bejeweled cuff-links worth more than most people’s homes. His tie is black. 

As he walks back to his office, surrounded by bodyguards, his thoughts fall on his adopted daughter, Morgana. Despite the myriad problems crowding his mind, he’s worried about her. He doesn’t understand where his sweet child went, replaced by a cold, unfamiliar woman.

At least he still has Arthur. At the thought of his son, a smile comes to his lips. Arthur, he knows, will never turn on him. Arthur will see his vision through.

***

At the moment, Arthur Pendragon is asleep in a bathtub. Head thrown back against the rim, legs akimbo, he looks exactly like the the man recovering from a late night of drinking that he is. The nearly-empty vodka bottle sits on the soap dish. 

Despite his best efforts, Arthur is having a dream. He is racing across a battlefield towards a shadowy figure, his sword drawn. He knows that this figure is vital, more than vital, but he doesn’t know who it is. Just when he’s about to reach them, his consciousness plummets back into his body and he wakes with a start, banging his skull on the dripping faucet.

“What the…” He rubs his aching head and looks around him, then down at himself. He is not wearing any clothes. He has a vague memory of attempting to take a bath. Clearly not something that should be attempted inebriated.

Last time we saw Arthur, he was a broken man becoming whole. Now he’s man breaking down. He passes his hand across his face as he tries to remember the complete events of the previous night.

There was a pub. There was definitely a pub. And…a man?

“So you’re finally up,” says a cheerful voice. Arthur looks up and sees a man leaning against the threshold. He’s wearing Arthur’s boxers, and his brown hair is tousled. “I tried to get you out of there, but it was a task for a more determined man than I.” 

Arthur squints. “Did we…?”

When the man grins, his eyes crinkle. “No,” he says. “You were pretty out of it. You were very insistent on getting clean.”

“Did anyone follow us?” Arthur says, grabbing a crumpled towel from the bathroom floor and wrapping it around his waist. “And, sorry, what’s your name again?”

“I don’t think anyone followed us,” says the man. “Your driver brought us here.”

“My… _fuck_.” Arthur punches the wall, which only makes his fingers hurt. He almost says, _He’s going to tell my father_ , but he doesn’t want to sound like a child.

Arthur. Fifteen-hundred years later and he’s still trying to please an unpleasable man. 

“And I’m Gwaine,” says Gwaine, running a hand through his hair. “I borrowed your toothpaste, by the way. You had a new toothbrush under the sink.”

Sighing, Arthur brushes past Gwaine into the hallway. Unlike Morgana, he lives in a house. Well, a mansion, really. A double staircase leads down to the enormous foyer, and he pounds down the steps to the kitchen. He needs a hangover cure.

Gwaine follows him. “I won’t tell anyone,” he calls out. “I wouldn’t.”

Arthur fixes him with a look. “If you told anyone, it would be the last thing you every did.” 

Gwaine holds up his hands, palms out. “Trust me, I understand the delicacy of this situation. Everyone knows that the Prime Minister doesn’t approve of deviants.” 

Grinding his teeth, Arthur yanks open the fridge and surveys its contents. He can’t help but feel that something is missing. That figure from his dream…

“How’s your head?” Arthur says as he takes down a carton of eggs. It’s the chef’s day off.

Gwaine frowns. “My head? I don’t remember anything happening to it.”

Arthur falters. “I don’t…” He shakes his own head sharply. “Never mind.” He cracks the eggs into a pan with a little more force than necessary. 

Gwaine sits at the enormous, glass kitchen table and props his head in his hand. “You’re cute, you know that?”

“I’ll have someone drive you home,” Arthur says, staring down at his eggs. His mind has already moved past this little hiccup. Soon, he will have forgotten this man entirely. So he thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://fictionista654.tumblr.com/)


	4. Awkward Phase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm a little drunk! let's do this!

The old man has no name. He had one, once. At least, he thinks he did. It’s hard to keep himself straight. He has so many pasts in his head, and only so much space in hist brain. They crowd each other into an incomprehensible mix. 

If he had magic, perhaps he would be able to remember. But his magic disappeared long ago. Sometimes he thinks he can feel it, a low burn in his heart, but he knows not to tempt it. The last thing he needs is a MagiScanner lighting up red.

So he has himself and his bookstore, and it should be enough. But as he sits here, rain streaming down the windows, the old man wonders why he is still here. He’s a relic from another time, he knows that much, and living out of time takes it toll. Nothing in life is free, not even life itself. Each day that goes by, the old man grows a little more tired, a little more reluctant.

He picks up a pen with his arthritic fingers and begins sketching in the margins of his newspaper, picked up on the corner when he went out for a bite of lunch. He draws the face he sees each night in his dreams, the only memory that has remained throughout the years. It’s incredible, that he should remember a face when he has forgotten so much else, but this man dwells in the incredible every day.

A proud nose, a pursed mouth. Eyes that seem to demand something. He shades in the shadows that pool beneath the man’s sharp cheekbones and in the hollow of his neck. It is the only face, the only thing, that the old man ever draws. 

The bell tinkles, and a young woman walks into the shop. Her wet curls are tied back in a sensible ponytail, and her face is flushed from the rain. Thick lashes ring her large brown eyes. She smiles politely at the old man, who stares back at her. His heart feels like it’s been snapped in two.

 _What is it?_ he asks himself, but he has no answer. He just knows that he has seen this woman before. 

“Is this yours?” she says, picking up the parcel he’d dropped on the floor coming in that morning. He takes it from her with a shaking hand. 

The woman smiles again and disappears into the shelves. The old man stares after her before turning his attention to the parcel. He cuts the tape with a letter opener and pulls back the flaps. 

Slowly, he pulls the antique dagger from its packaging. He isn’t sure why he bought it, why it called to him. He doesn’t know why he buys any of the things he buys except that they remind him of _something_.

“Wow, that’s incredible,” says a voice. The old man looks up and sees the woman with the large eyes. “Middle Ages, yeah?” He looks at her questioningly, and she adds, “It’s long and thin and sharp on both edges. Middle Ages. I’m sort of a weapons buff…” She trails off, looking awkward. “Sorry, you don’t want to hear about all that.”

He finds it in himself to smile at her. He still feels like he’s looking at a ghost.

“Is there a reason you bought this in particular?” says the woman. “It’s so beautiful.” 

The old man puts his hand to his mouth and shakes his head. He can’t speak. This isn’t new; it’s been years since he spoke. The woman looks mortified.

“Oh!” she says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. That must be hard. I mean, not that it’s terrible, unless you think it’s terrible, but—oh, God, I’ll shut up.” She puts her book on the counter—a volume of Tennyson—and bites her knuckles as he rings her up.

You’ve probably guessed, but Gwen is still in her awkward phase.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!


End file.
